Dr Trudy Paap and Prof. Brett Hurley led the traditional field trip that follows the Annual TPCP meetings.  They were accompanied by Profs Maria Ferreira and Brenda Wingfield, Drs Rene Heim, Hiroyuki Suzuki, and John Dedes.  Dr Heim is a post doctoral fellow at the University of Florida and Mr Dedes is from the Canadian Forest Service in Canada. Prof. Bernard Slippers joined the group for two days.

On this week long trip the group visited the Sappi Shaw Research Centre in Howick where they were hosted by Prof. Jolanda Roux.  Drs Nicki Jones, Wayne Jones, Jacob Crous, Riyad Ismail and Andre Nel gave presentations. The group also visited the Mondi KwaMbonambi nursery and some field sites.  They were hosted by Ben Pienaar, Dr Marius du Plessis and Izette Greyling. The last part of the trip was to areas close to Piet Retief and hosted by Johan Nel of TWK.  In this case the sites included Eucalyptus grandis infested with the Leptocybe gall wasp, Acacia mearnsii infected with wattle rust, Uromycladium acacia, and Eucalyptus nitens infested with cosid moth larvae.

The group took one day to look at native trees (and animals) in the Hluhluwe–iMfolozi Park. Another highlight was a visit to the Pietermaritzburg Botanical Garden. Trudy showed us the trees where she first discovered the polyphagous shot hole borer on the London Plane trees in the garden.